Prizewinning Filipino writer's musings, written in English and Tagalog-based Filipino.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Feeders, breeders

THE late mathematician and author Isaac Asimov wrote sometime in the 1980s about the growing imbalance between matter and energy in this neck of the universe—so much energy is being turned up as human flesh, breed in abandon and feed upon resources which grow scant through the years. ‘Twas a mind-blowing mode of squaring off with growing population pressure upon the planet’s dwindling resources. A potshot at the quality of people teeming like maggots upon the land’s moribund carcass: fuck and shuck… wipe off the plate, fornicate… fornicate… wipe off the plate…

Human activity has spawned global warming which, in turn, has whacked out global timetables in crop production to feed earth’s billions—hey, Thomas Malthus missed out on people fucking up the reality of our planet’s clime that, in turn, screwed up food production. Malthusian fears were limited to people cranking out more and more people until food supplies, renewable and non-renewable resources dwindle to a murderous minimum.

So we’re looking at how earth’s squirming billions have changed the world. For the worst.

So we’re now staring slack-jawed at food shortages, food riots, and prospects of mass starvation of global proportions. Wealthy nations can absorb the increases in prices of food staples. Of course, the food price spikes will lead to roof smashing spirals in costs of living. So there’ll be less money for other needs—health, education, clothing, fuel, even the subsidy for engagement in silly swap of asinine text on mobile phones. Economies would reel from the downward pressure…

Mother Nature doesn’t have rights—she ought to lay back and enjoy the rape and murder perpetrated on her. People do have legal rights and they can sue fed up Nature to kingdom come.

Mike Adams: “Frankly, we don't deserve this planet, and Mother Nature is about to take it away from us. It's time for us to either grow up, or perish. And all these people who say ‘we have to protect the economy, not the environment’ should probably just be rounded up and shipped off to Mars where they can play with the Martian dust all they want until they finally get the picture.

“The economies of our world have, sadly, been based on economic models that strongly encourage… consumption and growth. We live in a ‘throwaway economy,’ where people are encouraged to consume and expend as much as possible. No corporation makes money teaching people how to use less. And so we've pushed for aggressive expansion since about the 1950's: Build more, eat more, consume more. We've turned farm lands into housing tracts, and rainforests into biofuel fields. We've over-fished the oceans, over-farmed the soils and over-extended ourselves to the point where a population correction is inevitable… we are headed straight towards a global population implosion that will leave a billion or more people dead.”

A recent report by-lined David Gutierrez: “It would take more than five Earths to be able to sustain the world population if everyone consumed resources at the same rate as the United States, according to the New Economics Foundation (NEF).

”NEF stated that the world reached ‘ecological overdraft’ for 2007 on October 6 -- in other words, more resources were consumed between January 1 and October 6 than the planet can replenish in one year. NEF refers to this date as Ecological Debt Day.

”Ecological Debt Day came on October 9 in 2006 and October 12 in 2005. According to NEF, Ecological Debt Day has been earlier every year since ecological overdraft began in the 1980s.

”NEF noted that the gulf between consumption rates in the First and Third Worlds has also widened. For the United States' consumption rates to be sustainable if mimicked by the entire human population, NEF says, it would take 5.3 Earths. At the consumption rate of France or the United Kingdom, it would take 3.1. The numbers for other nations include 3.0 for Spain, 2.5 for Germany and 2.4 for Japan.

”The foundation pointed out that if every nation on the planet had the per capita consumption rate of China, however, it would only take 0.9 planets to sustain consumption rates. According to an NEF report, ‘Chinadependence,’ much of China's ecological impact is actually attributable the First World, due to the outsourcing of production to that country.

"As China is increasingly attacked because of its rising pollution levels, people overlook two important issues," said NEF Director Andrew Simms. ‘First, per person, China's greenhouse gas emissions are a fraction of those in Europe and the United States.

"’Second, a closer look at trade flows reveals that a large share of China's rising emissions is due to the dependence of the rest of the world on exports from China. Because of the way that data on carbon emissions gets collected at the international level, this has the effect of 'carbon laundering' economies like those of Britain and the U.S.’"

Richard St. Barbe-Baker: "If a man loses one-third of his skin, he dies. If a tree loses one-third of its bark, it too dies. If the earth is a sentient being, would it not be reasonable to expect that if it loses one-third of its trees and vegetative covering, it will also die?"

As stargazers and astrologists have it, the planet’s about to be ushered into a new era by 2012, an era of peace. Could be the quiet peace of a cemetery.

About Me

Born in the hour of the Dragon on a Saturday July 31 in the Year of the Green Water Horse (1954). I am a Christian, a Filipino, a martial artist, a gardener, a lover of life, husband to a lovely wife, father to 4 magnificent children, a grandfather... and sharer of passions to the willing.